I finished reading “Gilead“ on Thursday. Marilynne Robinson is a beautiful writer. “Gilead” would be the ideal book for a lazy summer afternoon spent in a hammock — it’s certainly not an action-packed romp. One phrase that struck me particularly:

I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle.”

American Life in Poetry: Column 043

By Ted Kooser
U.S. poet laureate
Lola Haskins, who lives in Florida, has written a number of poems about musical terms, entitled “Adagio,” “Allegrissimo,” “Staccato,” and so on. Here is just one of those, presenting the gentleness of pianissimo playing through a series of comparisons.

To Play Pianissimo
Does not mean silence.
The absence of moon in the day sky
for example.

Does not mean barely to speak,
the way a child’s whisper
makes only warm air
on his mother’s right ear.

To play pianissimo
is to carry sweet words
to the old woman in the last dark row
who cannot hear anything else,
and to lay them across her lap like a shawl.

From “Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems,” BOA Editions, Rochester, NY. Copyright (c) 2004 by Lola Haskins and reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

I frequently read a review of a book I’d like to read, then promptly forget about it and find myself wandering the library in a daze and settling for something like “St. Dale“ (really! I did! Please spare yourself!). I generally trust the recommendations of Matthew Baldwin, but he hasn’t mentioned anything new recently. So I was forced to find someone else’s list to poach.

I’ve been on a bit of a Ayelet Waldman kick recently (the result of a library-wandering with a more pleasant outcome than the aforementioned horror), and I was delighted to find a booklog on her Web site. It’s a list of and a few comments on about a gazillion books she’s read in the last five or so years. I had already wanted to read many of them, and she very kindly and unknowingly reminded me of them.

I’m always on the lookout for good books to add to my list (which is now Officially Written Down [or at least typed] over yonder in the sidebar), so please toss any recommendations my way.